If it wasn’t for the name, you might never guess this stylish restaurant serves Chinese cuisine. Still, the keyword here is “joke,” not “Soho”—don’t expect the food to transport you to New York’s Chinatown, or anywhere else. Textbook contemporary décor—sparse black-and-white furnishings and bay windows—makes a perfect setting for the young professionals Soho targets; except they’re not coming—and with good reason. The menu lists authentic Chinese dishes like deep-fried pigeon and braised goose feet, but you’d best hedge your bets with the affordable set lunches. These include a single dish, a drink and soup. The rest of the menu consists mostly of wok-fried recipes and rice dishes. Now for the jokes: salmon sashimi and seafood spaghetti. Are those the obligatory fusion touches? Or are they there in case you bring along a friend allergic to Chinese chow? Let’s go into the details of Soho’s average, salty dishes. The mushy Mabo tofu isn’t spicy. The rice topped with stir-fried minced beef looks like khao tom, the rice drowned in a pool of gravy. And, blindfolded, one can hardly distinguish the stir-fried minced beef from the wok-fried beef noodles. The kitchen does a slightly better job with stir-fried veggie dishes; still, while our stir-fried morning glory stalks thankfully weren’t oily, you can find better elsewhere at a lower price. Dim sum is on offer all day, but they’re not that good either. Kuay tiew lord, priced at a reasonable B60, was delivered as two bony rolls of steamed noodles with meager stuffing soaked in sweet black bean sauce. And isn’t xio long bao supposed to release a bunch of tasty soup when you bite into it? SJC’s were obviously over-steamed, leaving only dry thick skin and even dryer filling. Service is sweet but out of sync, resulting in multiple requests for drinks and a bill that ended up being delivered multiple times. If you crave a bowl of congee and hearty Chinese dishes, you are better off at the original Joke Club on Sukhumvit Soi 11. Leave Soho to the office workers in the neighborhood who have no time to travel elsewhere for lunch.